


of promises and sun-drenched haze

by titasjournal



Category: Mamma Mia! (2008)
Genre: Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 18:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15443493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titasjournal/pseuds/titasjournal
Summary: vignette: donna, sam and their years as a married couple





	of promises and sun-drenched haze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prncssolorgana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prncssolorgana/gifts).



> hi! this is my first donna & sam fanfiction, so feedback is appreciated! hope you enjoy :)
> 
> shoutout to my love & my life, kam, for editing this for me and for being my first reader, always.

Donna and Sam’s four years of marriage are like a series of pictures taken by an amateur photographer who couldn’t hold the camera still: her red scarf, worn at her wedding, and the blue ocean in overwhelming color in high definition, bursting and overexposed; the early morning swims on the water and the midnight kisses so lost in the motion haze they have been smeared out of existence altogether.

Time being no longer a kind metric to both – for twenty years have been wasted superfluously – they solely focus on the feel of skin brushing on skin, of regaining a sense of a long-gone passion and understanding.

On their wedding night, mid kiss, Donna tugged on his drenched trousers and waggled her eyebrows.

“What, Sheridan?” Sam asked, grabbing her hand and intertwining his fingers with hers.

She leaned in and whispered in his ear: “The beach.” Thanks to the loud music, he heard nothing at first. He shook his head in confusion and she grabbed his face with both hands, trying again. “Let’s go down to the beach. We’re already wet.”

He understood her that time, a mischievous grin forming on his lips.

 

 

“We’re married, Sam!” she shouted, jumping and landing on thin sand. “Married!” she sang in pure bliss.

“And here I was thinking you absolutely hated me all these years.” He rushed behind her, grabbing her waist in one swift motion. In his embrace, she brushed her lips on his and replied: “I did hate you. I hated you so much for leaving that I couldn’t focus on quite literally anything else.”

 

There was a meteor shower that night. When the radio said so, Donna pulled over her truck immediately. They threw down beach towels on the damp sand and looked up. Not long after, light streaked across the sky above them. Donna called them shooting stars (make a wish, honey!). Sam called them comet debris breaking through the atmosphere.

Either way, it was mesmerizing.

Shoulder to shoulder, leaning into each other, they followed the routes of light with untainted innocence.

Her lips closed on his fully, her hand travelling to the back of his neck, tugging on his hair. Their bodies came closer as he instinctively did the same to her damp curls. He could hardly believe how natural and intrinsically biological the action felt. Holding Donna close to him – kissing her, loving her – was the textbook definition of all that was right and sacred in the world, and it seemed quite remarkable that after all these years, his body still reacted the same way to her.

“I reckon you don’t hate me anymore, huh?” he breathed into her parted lips.

Donna offered him a sly smile.

Like always.

 

The first meals together were strange to say the least – Sam Carmichael sitting across the table from her had been a domestic dream of the wildest kind in her mind.

He never failed to tease her about how good the food was while she rested her feet on his chair.

 

A year in, Sam convinced Donna to take a (full!) day off from the hotel and walk around the island with him – with the promise of a romantic dinner in the later evening.

He must’ve been saying some nonsensical joke to earn a laugh from his hard-working wife when the sun started to go down:

“Shut up,” she laughed, pulling him down to her. Her mouth found his once more, trapping his bottom lip between her own. She suckled for a few moments before resting her lips atop his. Her fingers caressed his stubble, her eyelashes brushing his cheek as she kissed her way down his jawline. He tasted of salt and hope, of their past and future selves bottled up and intertwined.

“Tell me,” she asked, pulling him down on the damp sand. “Does she kiss like I used to kiss you?”

He turned her around and slipped his arms around her waist, resting her head on his chest. “Darling, no one has ever or could ever kiss me like you do.”

She hummed in approval, snuggling more comfortable against his frame.

 

While Sophie and Sky visit, sun kissed and chuck-full of adventures to tell, Donna and Sam have to be somewhat discreet. The idea of her grown daughter hearing her mother having sex had always mortified Donna and she never had to worry about it until then.

After a few days, they’d mastered their routine.

And so the familiar dance would begin, like a montage in a movie:

Lingering touches. Moments of momentous silence. Tension, tight and tangible between them. His hand on the small of her back. Echoes of a thousand moments shared in ocean-bound territory and little Greek cafes. Finding each other in the dim lit room. Orbiting each other, the pull of gravity between them greater than the ocean’s pull to the sand.

They delve into it fully and unabashedly.

 

Sam recalled their wedding night and the way she crawled on top of him until his hair touched the sand and his feet touched the tide. Her kisses reminded him of sun-drenched days and nights when she made him her own, and he would be on the brink of insanity should he have an ounce of desire to ever spend another day away from her. Donna Sheridan, he came to realize, was everything he’d ever wanted love to be.

“I can’t believe you’re sleeping next to me tonight,” she had breathed on his exposed chest as she’d settled herself in the crook of his neck.

“Thanks for saving me from spending another goddamned night on Bill’s boat, by the way.”  He’d answered back, simultaneously excited and afraid.

His fear had been in vain, though. Their bodies still remembered their last summer.

 

Even though the villa had been well into its usual frame one day three years in, it felt somehow different to Donna: on the smaller, white houses with roofs painted blue she saw the strokes of a young Sam on the back of a restaurant menu; on the hidden beaches in between foliage and bulky trees, she felt Sam’s touch one summer night before it seemed her bright future would never dim; on the dirt roads, she remembered the promises they made and the secrets they shared on the way home after a long day exploring away.

And just like that, the still independent Donna Sheridan known to the world felt as though she didn’t mind after all to be taken care of by a middle-aged, menopausal man, as long as that man was Sam Carmichael.

 

 

“Sam?” Donna asked into the three am humid night.

Her husband laid next to her, shirtless and in deep sleep, a lock of longer grey hair resting on his forehead. In a gesture of love – now she knew it wasn’t the mechanical side-effects of nostalgia – she swept the hair from his face and pressed her thumb to his bottom lip.

“Sam?” she repeated, this time a little bit louder. He stirred next to her, inadvertently placing his hand on her exposed thigh.

“Humm,” he slurred, before opening his eyes and looking at Donna.

She sat on the white and red sheets of their bed and stared passively at the walls – still blue, though now home to smiling pictures of both of them around the island and a handful of Sophie’s through the years. “Donna?”

“Sorry I woke you. You can go back to sleep, honey.” She finally turned to him, her feeble smile lit by the moonlight.

“What was it?” he pressed.

She laid back down, snuggled next to him and caressed his chest: “Never mind.”

He acquiesced silently, kissing the top of her head.

A while after, Donna was still awake and preoccupied, so she whispered: “I never imagined I’d have to put you through this.”

Her husband wasn’t asleep like she imagined he would be.

“Donna…” he advised, tightening his grip on her as though she could disappear into thin air should he ever let go. “Give me your hand.”

She straightened her back and turned to him, indulging him. “See that?” he asked, touching her wedding ring.

It took mere seconds for a stray tear to abandon her dry eyes while she nodded. “The rest of your life, Sheridan.”

She nodded once again, her tired body falling into his arms. “I love you for staying.” She whispered. “I love you for wanting to.”

He held onto her as tightly as he could without hurting her, running his fingers through her curls.

She squeezed her eyes shut, letting his touch lull her into an unabridged state of slumber, unsure if she had been trying to hold on to the image of a young Sam drawing their home on the back of a menu or push it away. Both hurt.

“Honey?” She asked, clearly not for the first time.

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever get homesick?” Donna offered the question softly, like she was afraid to know the answer.

“No,” he answered straightaway.

How could he? Donna was right here.

   

 

Almost four years in, Donna requested Sam – who slept patiently at her bedside – to tell her the story of how they met.

“It was storming one summer day and you needed help with your horse.” he obliged.

“Then what?” she weakly asked.

“Everything, Donna.”

As she averted her gaze to her grown daughter on the other side of her old bed, she felt as though Sam had said those two words like they meant exactly the same thing.


End file.
